


Anhedonia

by AstroGirl



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-10-01 18:03:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10195787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: Anhedonia, noun: the inability to feel and experience pleasure.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Gen Prompt Bingo, for the prompt "Anhedonia (Lack of Pleasure)." There seemed to me to be really only one possible choice of character for this one.

"Mommy! Daddy!" I call for them, and they come.

They believe me when I tell them who I am. They cry over me, and at first I think it's because of what I've become, but it's not. It's because they're glad to have me back. They tell me everything will be okay. They tell me I'm still their son. They tell me they love me.

I don't love them back. I want to, I try to, but I don't. I don't feel it. I don't feel anything. Except, finally, tired of never feeling anything.

Oh, and the determination to live. I feel that, whether I want to or not.

**

If I can't be their son, what can I be? Something else, maybe. Something interesting.

When I was a kid – and I'm not anymore, I know that, I have to remember that – I dreamed of having superpowers. And I do now, don't I? I can't shoot rainbows like I used to pretend I could, but I can go anywhere, burrowing my way through the Underground and popping up wherever I like. I can control _time_. That makes me more than a prince, doesn't it? Better than a prince. It makes me more like a god.

This should be exciting. It should make me happy. But I don't feel excited or happy.

I feel bored.

**

I decide to make friends. I will make everyone love me. _Everyone._ Maybe the love from all their souls together will fill up the missing space where mine should be.

So I'm nice to everyone. I solve everyone's problems. I give everyone exactly what they want. I do it over, and over, replaying every act, every conversation, until it's perfect. Until they're as perfectly happy as they can be. It's a little like a puzzle, and that's nice. Puzzles are distracting. I'm still capable of feeling distracted, just like I'm still capable of feeling bored. Maybe because those aren't really emotions at all.

But even when everyone loves me, I still don't love them back. I'm more bored with them than ever, sad little puppets that they are.

**

So I kill them. I kill them all. I kill my friends. Killing your friends should make you feel something, but I don't. A moment of satisfaction, maybe, because it's a different kind of challenge than making them happy, a new distraction. But that's all.

I kill my parents. I kill them for loving me when I can't love them back, for not loving me enough to help me. For being just like everyone else.

I kill them all, and I bathe in their dust, and then I reset and do it again, and again. Until that gets boring, too.

**

Then the human falls, and I think... I think I see my sibling, my friend, the one person who knows what I did, the one person who always understood. The only one who never turned into a dull, predictable toy.

I think, maybe this is it. Maybe this is the new thing I've been waiting for. I think I might even feel something. It isn't love, not really, but it might be hope. And even if it's not, well, maybe thinking that hope might be possible again is almost the same as feeling it.

Maybe... Maybe they'll be able to save me.


End file.
